Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: I'm going to reair an older episode of Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema here today and it's one that we have rerun before.
Speaker 1: It is the Paul Nashy film Horror Rises from the Tomb,
Speaker 1: also starred Helga Linney. This is a wonderful nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three Spanish horror film, and you know, I just had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to see it once more on the big
Speaker 1: screen at the Plaza Theater here in Atlanta. This was
Speaker 1: part of the Shane Morton Presents series. I'm to understand
Speaker 1: he's going to do more of these, showcasing a lot
Speaker 1: of international horror films over the months and months ahead.
Speaker 1: I think he said he's going to do like four
Speaker 1: of these a year. So if you're Atlanta based, check
Speaker 1: this out. If you're Atlanta based or just visiting the
Speaker 1: Atlanta area, be sure to check out the Plaza Theater
Speaker 1: historic theater here in Atlanta. They do so much great programming.
Speaker 1: I mean it's almost too much. Every week. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh man, there's like two or three things I'd love
Speaker 1: to go to. And you know, generally I'm pushing it
Speaker 1: to try and make it out to one. But hey,
Speaker 1: there's nothing beat seeing a classic film on the big screen.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Horror Rises from the Tomb, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is quite excellent. This is a lot of fun. So
Speaker 1: let's dive right into this older discussion, and I will
Speaker 1: add one more caveat. At the time, Joe and I had,
Speaker 1: I think largely just discovered Paul Nashi for ourselves, and
Speaker 1: at this point our esteem for Paul nash news works
Speaker 1: has risen quite a lot, risen from the Tomb even so,
Speaker 1: this is one that I've often thought about. It's like, man,
Speaker 1: I'd love to just do this episode again, so much
Speaker 1: more I'd like to say about Paul Nashi and this
Speaker 1: particular film. But anyway, this is the older episode. Still
Speaker 1: a lot of great content in here. We've covered other
Speaker 1: Paul nan she films since this episode came out, and
Speaker 1: I guarantee you we will do more Paul Nashy films
Speaker 1: in the future. All right, let's venture into the Tomb.
Speaker 2: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: So I just finished rewatching it and made it to
Speaker 3: the end where there's a really good stunt fall I
Speaker 3: don't know if you caught that when the headless body
Speaker 3: of the Warlock rolls down the steps and it's it's
Speaker 3: obviously not a dummy, it's a stunt man. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: headless suit. He's getting the legs going all of this,
Speaker 3: so we obviously can't see.
Speaker 1: I think the effects in this movie are better than
Speaker 1: they should have been in some regards, like I like
Speaker 1: the scenes where there's the lifting of the head. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm something of a well, I wouldn't say I'm a
Speaker 1: kind of sewer, but I put I pay a lot
Speaker 1: of attention whenever there's a beheading and there's head being
Speaker 1: handled in a film, because I'm always curious, like, how
Speaker 1: good is it going to look? How are they going
Speaker 1: to do it? Are they going to do the dummy head?
Speaker 1: Are they going to do like, you know, shooting an
Speaker 1: actual head the right way and making it look like
Speaker 1: it's detached. And they did a mix here that mostly
Speaker 1: worked pretty well. I've seen it look rougher in more
Speaker 1: expensive movies.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends what you mean by well. I do agree, though,
Speaker 3: I found I think literally every scene with the severed
Speaker 3: head hilarious.
Speaker 1: Well, it is inherent. Yeah, there's something inherently hilarious about it, too,
Speaker 1: especially given the seriousness with which it is approached.
Speaker 3: Did we already start the episode?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 3: Hello, are you listening?
Speaker 1: Oh hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: My name is Rod Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We were just talking a little bit about beheadings
Speaker 1: and movies disembodied heads, the living head off the beheaded,
Speaker 1: because that's what we have in today's film, in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three's Horror Rises from the Tomb Rob.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is the third or fourth early
Speaker 3: seventies Spanish horror movie you have picked. What What's got
Speaker 3: you going down this road? How'd you end up in
Speaker 3: in seventies Spain?
Speaker 1: Oh, there's just something about this, this whole realm of
Speaker 1: horror filmmaking. There's just some really there's some great stuff here,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of great stuff that I haven't seen.
Speaker 1: So it's exciting to me because the film we're talking
Speaker 1: about here to today, Horror Rises from the Tomb he
Speaker 1: is considered a classic of seventies Spanish horror, Like this
Speaker 1: is a this film is a big deal. So I
Speaker 1: had not seen it previously, so it was it was.
Speaker 1: It was one I was it was interested in. I
Speaker 1: was reading the synopsis and I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: as long as this one sort of stays within the parameters,
Speaker 1: this could be the film for this week. And lo
Speaker 1: and behold it was. So.
Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about this movie going in, but
Speaker 3: I was. I was certainly tempted when you when you
Speaker 3: shared with me, I think a user review you came
Speaker 3: across on some website that essentially made it seem like
Speaker 3: this may in fact have also been an ego trip
Speaker 3: for a particular writer slash actor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are accounts of Paul Nashy, the star and
Speaker 1: writer here and in his his his ego. I have
Speaker 1: seen that written about, and yeah, this is I ran
Speaker 1: across this particular write up on Letterboxed letterboxed dot com.
Speaker 1: That's l E T T E R b o x D.
Speaker 1: That's a great website to go to if you want
Speaker 1: listings of films, lists of films, and hey, we are
Speaker 1: on there. We have an account under the user named
Speaker 1: weird House, and you can go there and see all
Speaker 1: the films that we've talked about in a nice visual display.
Speaker 1: And I also have links to the podcast episodes on there.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this particular review, Yeah, a user by the
Speaker 1: name of their name is spelled like lou l o u,
Speaker 1: but then it says rhymes with Wao, so I guess
Speaker 1: it's Loo Loo. Right. When Paul Nashi wrote this movie
Speaker 1: about medieval Paul Nashi getting decapitated because of alleged Satanist practices,
Speaker 1: he knew it was really about the executioners being jealous
Speaker 1: of medieval Paul Nashi's good looks slash him being irresistible
Speaker 1: to women everywhere. When it came time for Paul Nashi
Speaker 1: to write a hero into the story to save everyone
Speaker 1: and their wives from the clutches of medieval Paul Nashi,
Speaker 1: he conjured up dreaming present day hunk Paul Nashi. He
Speaker 1: knew that even if dreamy Paul Nashi wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to defeat medieval Paul Nashi, he would at least be
Speaker 1: recognized as the hero Dreamy Paul Nashi really is.
Speaker 3: I'd say that's about right. So this movie was not
Speaker 3: directed by Paul Nashi, but written by Paul Nashi and
Speaker 3: starring Paul Nashi in at least three different roles.
Speaker 1: That's right now, I think that I would critique. This
Speaker 1: review is hilarious and I love it, but it's not
Speaker 1: one accurate in terms of what we get out of
Speaker 1: the Paul Nashi's and we'll get into that the different
Speaker 1: Paul nash characters. There's really one dreamy Paul Nashy character
Speaker 1: in this film, and he's pretty magical.
Speaker 3: So I was watching this movie on a streaming service
Speaker 3: that is supported by AD breaks, and I was deeply
Speaker 3: intrigued by the fact that the movie has major themes
Speaker 3: of a floating severed warlockhead dripping neck blood on things,
Speaker 3: including like a painting in the process of being painted,
Speaker 3: and so we'd have the head, it would dribble some
Speaker 3: neck blood, and then we would cut to commercial and
Speaker 3: the commercials are all for paper towels and other cleaning products.
Speaker 3: Is this a coincidence or has AD targeting got this good,
Speaker 3: like they can detect the contents of the film and
Speaker 3: adjust ads accordingly.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, you know, when stains are
Speaker 1: at their worst, such as from dripping heads, you need
Speaker 1: a quality paper towel.
Speaker 3: The other thing about the streaming service that I thought
Speaker 3: was funny was that it said this movie is rated
Speaker 3: TV fourteen despite it being absolutely wall to wall, severed heads,
Speaker 3: gratuitous nudity and dripping blood all over the place.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe that's like euro rating standards. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe, so, yeah, this is not a film for the children.
Speaker 1: Though I have read that there is a quote unquote
Speaker 1: clothed cut of this, so they might have shot some
Speaker 1: alternate scenes in which various characters are clothed instead of
Speaker 1: in various states of nudy, but it would be an
Speaker 1: entirely different film that way, so I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: can recommend that even if you can find that cut.
Speaker 3: Another thing I will say about my experience of watching
Speaker 3: the Horror Rises from the Tomb is that it had
Speaker 3: two features which may seem at odds with each other,
Speaker 3: but we're both simultaneously true. One is that the plot
Speaker 3: is extremely simple. There are not a lot of like
Speaker 3: twist and turns and machinations. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: at least half of the scenes in this movie, I
Speaker 3: had no idea what was going on. By that, I mean,
Speaker 3: I could not tell you who some at least some
Speaker 3: of the characters on screen were, how they arrived at,
Speaker 3: what they're doing, why they're doing it, or what it means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were a few scenes in this where I
Speaker 1: think I watched them three times and then consulted a
Speaker 1: plot summary to figure out exactly what the characters were
Speaker 1: attempting to do. Uh huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've had really in the first half, had a
Speaker 3: hard time keeping the different characters and their relationships straight.
Speaker 3: I did not know who was who until until the
Speaker 3: Warlock magic really starts happening in the second half. Then
Speaker 3: I guess it gets easier to follow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, this is a movie about the
Speaker 1: ultimate occult power couple coming back from the dead to
Speaker 1: just tear it up. And so once they're back and
Speaker 1: in action, you're one hundred percent on board. You can
Speaker 1: you basically know where things are going and you can
Speaker 1: follow the chaos, but you have to get up to
Speaker 1: that point, and it can be a little confusing but
Speaker 1: never boring getting right.
Speaker 3: It's like the Sonny and Share of Satanism rise from
Speaker 3: the Grave in order to get rid of on the
Speaker 3: what the descendants of the inquisitors who put them to
Speaker 3: the sword.
Speaker 1: Yes, but also I think they they just want to
Speaker 1: consume human hearts, drink blood, worship Satan and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but in the parts where I had no idea
Speaker 3: what was going on. I think part of that is
Speaker 3: dialogue and dubbing, Like this movie did have that quality
Speaker 3: of I would literally be watching a scene with my
Speaker 3: full attention. I'm not on my phone, I'm not distracted,
Speaker 3: full attention. But then afterwards I could not summarize what
Speaker 3: anybody said in the scene. So there's a bit of that.
Speaker 3: But then another part I think that made it a
Speaker 3: little hard to follow is that the cinematography drifts more
Speaker 3: toward that dreamy style that you would see in like
Speaker 3: a full Chi movie, where I think often our brains
Speaker 3: are trained, we pick up on certain cues of how
Speaker 3: a scene looks and sounds, and like, ah, this feels
Speaker 3: more like a dream sequence. I don't need to pay
Speaker 3: close attention to the plot because it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: it's it's dreamy mode. Except this actually is just the
Speaker 3: phys reality of the narrative.
Speaker 1: The world of the living is a dream of the dead,
Speaker 1: which is probably not true, but that sounds like the
Speaker 1: logic you would hear in a seventies.
Speaker 3: Horror trailer, right, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think when it comes to this movie's very memorable,
Speaker 1: I think, but there is in terms of like remembering lines,
Speaker 1: The most memorable lines for me are some of the
Speaker 1: dumb things that the painter character Maurice says are occult
Speaker 1: power couple. Here, they have plenty of times where they
Speaker 1: basically just say occult things, and while I don't recall
Speaker 1: the details, the feel of it resonates. So I'd say
Speaker 1: this is a movie that is more to be felt
Speaker 1: than comprehended. And again I had to go back and
Speaker 1: watch some things several times just to make sure I
Speaker 1: was understanding what they were doing. But to be clear,
Speaker 1: this film rocks. You should see it if you want
Speaker 1: to see it. If you're like, well, I I want
Speaker 1: to see this for myself before I get into the
Speaker 1: main episode, well let me tell you where you can
Speaker 1: get it. First of all, as far as physical media goes,
Speaker 1: Shout Factory as the Paul Nashy collection out on Blu
Speaker 1: Ray that has the films in it, Horror Rises from
Speaker 1: the Tomb, Vengeance of the Zombies, Blue Eyes of the
Speaker 1: Broken Doll, Night of the Werewolf, and Human Beasts. You
Speaker 1: can also pick up Horror Rises from the Tomb on DVD.
Speaker 1: I watched it on Prime, but it was not great
Speaker 1: quality and it was formatted for television. I think the
Speaker 1: version you watched was on tub It was letterbox edition.
Speaker 1: But of course you're gonna have ads that way, so
Speaker 1: you know, it depends how you want to play it.
Speaker 1: I ended up going back on Twoby and watching some
Speaker 1: of the scenes again that I needed to revisit.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'd say it's worth it just for the
Speaker 3: hilarious ad cutaways, but.
Speaker 1: Who knows how the machine's working there. It may pick
Speaker 1: up on something else with somebody else's experience, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Well the basic elevator pitch here is Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, Horror Rises from the Tomb. Don't worry if
Speaker 1: you watch this film, Horror will rise from the tomb.
Speaker 1: The ultimate occult power couple won't let death stand in
Speaker 1: their way.
Speaker 3: It's a tender love story about a warlock and his head.
Speaker 3: Boy meets girl. Boy loses head, boy regains head, boy
Speaker 3: gets revenge, Boy loses his head.
Speaker 1: Well, boy loses, boy loses his head, Boy loses girl,
Speaker 1: Boy regains head, Boy regains girl, Boy loses girl, boy
Speaker 1: loses his head. That's the full plots.
Speaker 3: Dinosaurs eat boy, woman inherits the Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: From the dark and Mysterious Middle Ages, full of mystery
Speaker 4: and violence. There now comes to the screen. Fear rises
Speaker 4: from the tomb, a curse which would bring these people
Speaker 4: to the most terrifying situations. Fear rises from the tomb
Speaker 4: with all the mystery and terror of medieval rights and witchcraft,
Speaker 4: the infernal powers of evil persecuting these defenseless bees. Beer
Speaker 4: rises from the Tomb. A pro film's production, directed by
Speaker 4: Carlos auded seven wombs of past today we shall take them.
Speaker 2: I want when the Supreme day comes, that they are
Speaker 2: sufficiently prepared for the sacrifice.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's talk a bit about the humans
Speaker 1: involved in this before we get back into the plot. So,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned already, Paul Nashi did not direct this.
Speaker 1: He was directed by Carlos Arid who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven through two thousand and eight. He was a Spanish
Speaker 1: director of various erotic dramas and Paul Nashi horror films,
Speaker 1: including Curse of the Devil from seventy three, Blue Eyes
Speaker 1: of the Broken Doll from seventy four, and The Mummies
Speaker 1: Revenge from seventy five. As a producer, he helped bring
Speaker 1: the films Alien Predator from eighty six into.
Speaker 3: The blood, not alien versus predator, but not just alien
Speaker 3: predator alien predator.
Speaker 1: He also produced or was one of the producers on
Speaker 1: Claudio Fragaso of Troll two themes nineteen eighty four film
Speaker 1: Monster Dog starring Alice Cooper. What.
Speaker 3: I don't think I knew about that, or if I
Speaker 3: did it.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, but I've seen the posters and
Speaker 1: some stills from it. It looks it looks wonderfully awful.
Speaker 1: And as you might recall from our episode on trollto
Speaker 1: I mean, Claudio Fragaso took this very seriously, this filmmaking thing,
Speaker 1: and so he's exactly the sort of director you want
Speaker 1: directing a film called Monster Dog starring Alice Cooper.
Speaker 3: So if Troll two was a film about how he
Speaker 3: believed that meat eaters were being persecuted by vegetarians, what
Speaker 3: is the meaning of Monster Dog.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but if the poster is any indication
Speaker 1: he pursues this topic, this subject matter via some sort
Speaker 1: of like fleshless killer doberman gross.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, so that's the director technically, but I
Speaker 3: don't know. The vibe gives the pretty much top to bottom,
Speaker 3: this is the Paul Nashi show.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: So who is this guy?
Speaker 1: So Paul Nashi, Yeah, who has story and screenplay credits
Speaker 1: on this. He plays our Warlock character Alaric Dimarnac. He
Speaker 1: also plays this is complicated, but Alarach's traitor's brother, Armand Demarnac.
Speaker 1: And he also plays Armand's descendant, Hugo Demarnac in the present.
Speaker 1: So three different roles, and all of them have a
Speaker 1: different feel to them.
Speaker 3: Though. It's weird because his descendant character is not like
Speaker 3: the inheritor of the Warlock throne. He in fact, he
Speaker 3: basically just treats his own descendant as another enemy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and you know there's a to there. I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a different energy to Hugh. I mean
Speaker 1: Hugo the modern day Paul Nashy character in this Whitch,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I mean the nineteen seventies. You know,
Speaker 1: he's still kind of a stylish dude. But he's also
Speaker 1: I mean, he's doomed. He can't stand up to the Warlock.
Speaker 1: He's not like, I am the descendant of Alaric and
Speaker 1: therefore I'm the one who can defeat him. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's not going to go that way at all.
Speaker 3: Now. In fact, he's a doomed skeptic and he's the
Speaker 3: guy who like doesn't believe in the power of spirit mediums,
Speaker 3: so you know things are not going to end well
Speaker 3: for him. Movies like this do not reward people who
Speaker 3: don't believe in the supernatural, and so nash But also
Speaker 3: I would say about Nashi's character, this is not unique
Speaker 3: to him, but he is. This movie has multiple contemporary
Speaker 3: characters who are very much like turtleneck sweater tucked into
Speaker 3: pants guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah. They just sort of wander into
Speaker 1: all this with They're like, yeah, let's have a seance
Speaker 1: that this old estate, let's call back. Let's see we
Speaker 1: can call the spirit of this dead warlock. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a good time. We'll have some wine, we'll smoke
Speaker 1: a little bit. What could possibly go wrong?
Speaker 3: I would say Paul Nashy's energy as an actor is
Speaker 3: a strange combination something I'm not really used to. In
Speaker 3: one sense, he has very traditional, almost kind of like
Speaker 3: boxy or rectangular masculine movie star energy. I'm trying to
Speaker 3: think of who to compare, you know, like a like
Speaker 3: a Ed Begley senior or something. But then on the
Speaker 3: other half, kind of a weirdo worminess that is almost
Speaker 3: the likes of Peter Lorie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he has his His physicality is is interesting
Speaker 1: to behold. Yeah, because because on one level, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's he's clearly ripped, as we'll discuss he was. He's
Speaker 1: a former professional weightlifter. So so he's, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he's quite a physical specimen. And yes he he but
Speaker 1: yet he can he does have this kind of wormy
Speaker 1: quality to him. He is a natural energy for playing
Speaker 1: this eternal outsider, this warlock that was beheaded in the
Speaker 1: past and now has to murder his way into being
Speaker 1: again in the present. So some of you might be wondering, well,
Speaker 1: who is Paul Nashi. We're talking about him. He sounds
Speaker 1: pretty great. Well, he is, in many people's words, the
Speaker 1: Lon Chaney junior of Spanish horror cinema.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So he was born Jaquinto Molino, but he assumed the
Speaker 1: name Paul Nashi for acting. And yeah, he plays three
Speaker 1: separate characters in this film. Also wrote the screenplay. And
Speaker 1: this is a guy. We can't really appreciate the full
Speaker 1: richness of Paul Nashi in a single episode of Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema, but I feel like this is a really
Speaker 1: fun film and a great introduction to him at least.
Speaker 1: So this is a guy who was born into a
Speaker 1: successful furrier's family during the Spanish Civil War, who then
Speaker 1: began to pursue a serious adult life of professional weightlifting
Speaker 1: and architecture, but deep down only wanted one thing. He
Speaker 1: wanted to be the wolf Man, The Wolfman, the Wolfman. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, from what I've read, he grew up, you know,
Speaker 1: idolizing these old horror movies and especially the wolfman roles,
Speaker 1: the Lion Cheney Junior sort of roles, and fate would
Speaker 1: deliver him in that direction. So he started out in
Speaker 1: various uncredited and sometimes rumored roles in various nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: Spanish production stuff like El Sid an episode of the
Speaker 1: TV show I Spy. But then in nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: he wrote and starred in a film that was originally
Speaker 1: titled Mark of the Werewolf, but then on the American
Speaker 1: groundhouse circuit it had the name Frankenstein's Bloody Terror, in
Speaker 1: which he played werewolf of Valdemar Daninski for the first
Speaker 1: of many, many times.
Speaker 3: So this was a franchise, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He did. I think it's like a dozen of these,
Speaker 1: with titles like Assignment Terere Wolf versus The Vampire Woman,
Speaker 1: The Fury of the Wolf Man, Doctor Jackal versus The Werewolf,
Speaker 1: Curse of the Devil, Night of the Howling Beast, Night
Speaker 1: of the Werewolf, the Beast and the Magic Sword, Howl
Speaker 1: of the Devil, like Cantripus, The Moonlight Murders, and Tomb
Speaker 1: of the Werewolf. Most of these films are from the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, but they ultimately span five decades, and
Speaker 1: they're not a continuous narrative by any means, with the
Speaker 1: plots varying wildly, like there's somewhere he goes to Asia
Speaker 1: and like goes to Tibet and Japan to try and
Speaker 1: treat his lacanthropy. But a number of them look phenomenal
Speaker 1: and they're just total werewolf features.
Speaker 3: Well, I feel like this sheds new light on a
Speaker 3: major flub in the movie that really seems like it
Speaker 3: should have been caught, which is that in the English dub,
Speaker 3: at least, there's one part where they try to say
Speaker 3: the word lichen thropes, but instead they say I think
Speaker 3: lincoln thropes, like President Lincoln.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I noticed that that was I actually went
Speaker 1: back and looked at that on two be with the
Speaker 1: captions on and the captions for this one said, you
Speaker 1: have empires in Lincoln's robes instead of you are vampires
Speaker 1: and Lincoln tropes licenthropes. But they said lincoln thropes, yeah,
Speaker 1: Lincoln thropes, Yeah, Lincoln throat. The dubs has Lincoln thropes.
Speaker 1: They mean like they're talking about lacantrobe. But yeah. But
Speaker 1: we'll come back to the formal charges against Alaric in
Speaker 1: a bet. But back to Nashi here. Mostly it was
Speaker 1: this werewolf character that he returned to, but the warlock
Speaker 1: character in this Alric he does come back in a
Speaker 1: later nineteen eighty two film called Panic Beats apparently and
Speaker 1: plays the character once more.
Speaker 3: Is that about does he become a disco warlock? What's
Speaker 3: the beats referred to?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure comes back from the grave. But and
Speaker 1: it may not even be connected because, like I say,
Speaker 1: much of many of these werewolf films, it's not like
Speaker 1: it's a concise narrative. It's like, let's bring let's bring
Speaker 1: this guy back again, let's have another adventure. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it has to actually make sense or be stitched
Speaker 1: into the grand fabric of the thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, I see, like you can have many Dracula movies,
Speaker 3: but they're not like all direct sequels to each other
Speaker 3: with continuous or plot continuity exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well now, but I am thinking beats that because you
Speaker 3: look at Nashi as the warlock in this movie, and
Speaker 3: he does look like he could tear up the dance floor,
Speaker 3: like he would get out there in the lights. I mean,
Speaker 3: he'd be doing the whole what's the you know, the
Speaker 3: pointing dance, the John Travolta one.
Speaker 1: I know the one. I don't know what it's called. Okay,
Speaker 1: So just a little more more on Nashi here. I
Speaker 1: looked into him a bit of reading an article, actually
Speaker 1: a chapter in a book titled an Icon Rises from
Speaker 1: the Grave The twenty first century Cult Stardom of Paul Nashi,
Speaker 1: written by Andy Willis. Willis writes that Nashi was central
Speaker 1: to quote the development, revival, and reinvention of horror cinema
Speaker 1: in Spain. The paper mostly centers around the cult like
Speaker 1: revival of appreciation for Nashi late in his life and career,
Speaker 1: as film fans and filmmakers in Spain and beyond began
Speaker 1: to reevaluate his films, but it does put point out that, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was very much operating in a time when horror
Speaker 1: was seen as very low brow in Spanish cinema. Like,
Speaker 1: if you had any self respect, you'd be working in
Speaker 1: serious cinema. And if you were doing horror then like
Speaker 1: what are you doing?
Speaker 3: But what was serious cinema at the time, peplam movies
Speaker 3: like The Sword and Sandal stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just serious dramas about history and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know nothing about I mean, this is about history though,
Speaker 1: this is about an historic warlock. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know why the industry was so down on
Speaker 1: this film at the time. All right, well we'll come back.
Speaker 1: We'll discuss more about this wonderful performance as we continue.
Speaker 1: But there are other human beings we need to mention,
Speaker 1: at least in passing. Okay, we mentioned earlier. This is
Speaker 1: a power couple. It's not just Alaric, it's Alaric and Mobile.
Speaker 1: He has to bring Mobile back to life. Mabil is
Speaker 1: played by Helga Line. Helga is back. She was the
Speaker 1: titular Larele from The Laureles Grasp, the gorgeous redhead German
Speaker 1: born actor who made a name for herself mostly in
Speaker 1: Spanish cinema. Both of these films came out in seventy three,
Speaker 1: so if you want to hear more about her, go
Speaker 1: back to that episode. But she was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one. As of this recording is still alive, and
Speaker 1: she worked from nineteen forty one through two thousand and
Speaker 1: six and played a lot of fempatals characters in horror movies,
Speaker 1: various genre films, and yeah, it was pretty big in
Speaker 1: Spanish cinema, and in this she once more gets to
Speaker 1: absolutely slay multiple people and also consume their hearts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, noticing incredible amounts of overlap with the Lorealized Grasp,
Speaker 3: I was not prepared for how much these movies would
Speaker 3: have in common, even down to what looks like it
Speaker 3: could be just a coincidence, but what looked like the
Speaker 3: same shooting locations, talking.
Speaker 1: About the coastline, that really dreary coastline.
Speaker 3: The dreary lakeside. It looked exactly like the lake in
Speaker 3: Lorealized Grasp, And I would almost be surprised if it
Speaker 3: was not shot in the same place. But maybe I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the actual I don't know about the about
Speaker 1: the lake, but the actual estate that we see, I
Speaker 1: believe was in Paul Nashey's family, like that was that
Speaker 1: was his family's estate there that they filmed on.
Speaker 3: But it's not just that. Okay. So both movies feature
Speaker 3: Helga Lena as a kind of I don't know, loosely
Speaker 3: a vampireus of sorts, some kind of you know, creature
Speaker 3: that comes back from the grave or comes back through
Speaker 3: history to slash people with fingernail like in ways that
Speaker 3: leave these like you know, parallel slashes on their bodies
Speaker 3: and then extract their hearts and eat them. Both movies
Speaker 3: are about.
Speaker 1: This, right though. In the Laurli she changes into an
Speaker 1: actual monster and in this movie she just gets more.
Speaker 3: Naked, that's true, but she still does the fingernail slash.
Speaker 1: She does.
Speaker 3: This movie has has Wolverine style slashing.
Speaker 1: But she's great and she really vamps it up.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are great scenes where she and and the
Speaker 3: Warlock are arguing about, you know, when they're going to
Speaker 3: eat hearts? Are we gonna eat hearts now or we're
Speaker 3: gonna have to eat them later?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What is the plan? When do we when are
Speaker 1: we praising Satan right now? No? We need to wait.
Speaker 1: There's so many moons, we need to wait. The exact
Speaker 1: details of their plan are maybe a little vague, but she.
Speaker 3: Makes a good point. I mean, he's like, no, we
Speaker 3: need to We'll do the sacrifice to to Satan later
Speaker 3: and then we'll eat hearts then. And I think she
Speaker 3: makes the point that if we were angry until then,
Speaker 3: we're going to be making bad decisions. So we need
Speaker 3: to eat at least one heart now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And she's like, honey, we've been dead for a
Speaker 1: long time. We've got to eat.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right though, So these are the two most impressive
Speaker 1: actors in the film, but we have some other roles
Speaker 1: worth mentioning. Emma Cohen plays, who lived nineteen forty six
Speaker 1: through twenty sixteen, plays the character Elvira, not to be
Speaker 1: confused with Elvira the horror host. So. Emma Cohen was
Speaker 1: a Spanish actor as well as a writer and director.
Speaker 1: In fact, in twenty eleven she apparently directed a short
Speaker 1: film adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges The Aliph. She was
Speaker 1: also the longtime partner of Peruvian born Spanish director Fernando
Speaker 1: Fernan Gomez till his death, but she before this she
Speaker 1: did a lot of b movies and horror films in
Speaker 1: the seventies, including seventy five to Night of the Walking Dead,
Speaker 1: Jess Franco's nineteen seventy five Count Dracula. That's one that
Speaker 1: starred Christopher Lee as Dracula, Herbert Lohm as Van Helsing,
Speaker 1: and Kloskinsky as a quote unquote Wren Feared. I don't
Speaker 1: know why Wren feared in the IMDb credits, but he
Speaker 1: is huh. Cohen also had an uncredited role in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies Nicholas and Alexandria And yeah, she in this she
Speaker 1: is she basically, she's our final girl. She's the one
Speaker 1: of the two daughters of one of the villagers in
Speaker 1: the place that they go to.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, I'm gonna admit that I again had a
Speaker 3: hard time keeping the different characters in the human characters
Speaker 3: in their relationships straight. So if you're asking, like who's
Speaker 3: married to who or whatever, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had to go back and I like, at first,
Speaker 1: I was like, I guess this was Hugo's wife, but
Speaker 1: it's not. No, it's not. Here goes why that's a
Speaker 1: different character entirely. Well, we'll summarize all that in a bit.
Speaker 3: Okay. There were a number of laugh out loud moments
Speaker 3: for me in this movie, but I would say the
Speaker 3: biggest one, the best one, is a scene where we
Speaker 3: have a guy who's had been seeing visions of dark
Speaker 3: eyes staring at him in the night and and he's
Speaker 3: and he can't stop seeing them when he closes his eyes.
Speaker 3: So he's got to paint. He's a painter, and he's
Speaker 3: like painting on a canvas and then suddenly above the
Speaker 3: canvas appears a laughing, severed head that's just going oh
Speaker 3: and it and dripping blood all over the painting. And
Speaker 3: it's so good. But this painter, like his dopiness makes
Speaker 3: it so much better.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's haunted by the head of Alrich and he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. I keep seeing this head.
Speaker 1: I gotta paint it. I gotta paint it. And he's
Speaker 1: and he's painting this like sub night gallery quality painting,
Speaker 1: you know, of this headless body holding not Alaric's head
Speaker 1: but modern Paul Nashy's character's Hugo's head. Uh huh. It's
Speaker 1: pretty great. But yeah, this this is the this painter.
Speaker 1: Carector Maurice was played by Victor Barrera. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: any dates for this actor, but yeah, he's a wonderful,
Speaker 1: doomed idiot in this the character is the actor. Barrera
Speaker 1: appeared in such Spanish films as nineteen seventies in the
Speaker 1: Folds of the Flesh, the seventy three Nashy film Count
Speaker 1: Dracula's Great Love, and also the Nashy film Hunchback of
Speaker 1: the Morgue, as well as the nineteen seventy three film
Speaker 1: Green Inferno.
Speaker 3: Who was Count Dracula's Great Love.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't seen it, must I'm guessing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could be his career. You know, he
Speaker 1: married to his work, but I imagine it's some woman
Speaker 1: generally that's probably going to be nice.
Speaker 3: I am married to the blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, one more thing about Barrera. He was also
Speaker 1: in the seventy three Judy Geeson film A Candle for
Speaker 1: the Devil, and as a director and writer, he did
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy eight film The Terrorist.
Speaker 3: He also tucks his turtle into his pants.
Speaker 1: He does. Yes. Now we're going to skip on the
Speaker 1: rest of the actors here, though there are some other
Speaker 1: fun performances, but skip into the music. Carmelo A. Bernala
Speaker 1: did the music. He lived nineteen twenty nine through two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, and all I have to say is
Speaker 1: I hope you like creepy organ music and weird percussion sounds,
Speaker 1: because this film is loaded with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's got this steady, slow, ascending organ melody that
Speaker 3: just repeats and repeats and repeats. Honestly, it got a
Speaker 3: little monotonous for me.
Speaker 1: I thought it fit this film like a glove. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it would work in every film. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I need a copy of it or I'm looking
Speaker 1: for a high grade vinyl release. But for this film,
Speaker 1: I thought it worked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the appropriate vibe. But yeah, I mean you'll
Speaker 3: hear it quite a few times now.
Speaker 1: Bernala here. He was a longtime Spanish composer of many films,
Speaker 1: including seventy four's Torment and seventy three's Count Dracula's Great Love. Oh.
Speaker 3: He wrote the love theme from Count.
Speaker 1: Dractula's Great Love. One assumes one more note about a
Speaker 1: person in this there's a special effects. The special effects
Speaker 1: were by Antonio Molina and I don't have dates for him,
Speaker 1: but this is a guy that apparently has been working
Speaker 1: in special effects since the nineteen sixties, starting with nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four's This is actually the Barry Sullivan film Pyro
Speaker 1: the Thing Without a Face that we referenced in our
Speaker 1: Fiend Without a Face episode. But Molina here is apparently
Speaker 1: still working today in Spanish productions, and even worked on
Speaker 1: six episodes of Game of Thrones, while he also served
Speaker 1: as an armor supervisor in the Spain unit for such
Speaker 1: big films as Wonder Woman nineteen eighty four and Terminator
Speaker 1: Dark Fate. So kind of a cool connection there. This
Speaker 1: is not a film that you watch and you think, wow,
Speaker 1: I guess they had just tons of money to spend
Speaker 1: on special effects. No, so I kind of alluded to earlier.
Speaker 1: I feel like the effects in this film, such as
Speaker 1: they are, look pretty good, though.
Speaker 3: It is that early seventies Zuo style of like very
Speaker 3: bright red, almost orange blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's alarming. Maybe that's why I got the
Speaker 1: TV fourteen.
Speaker 3: What you perhaps?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well, let's bust into the plot a
Speaker 1: little bit, Joe, take us back to the mid fifteenth century.
Speaker 3: Is that when it is mid fifteenth century, I think
Speaker 3: they say.
Speaker 1: I think that's what the narration says.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this movie begins with the World's Most Depressing parade.
Speaker 3: You're watching like some people kind of tromp through a
Speaker 3: vast we see them like on a plane with mountains
Speaker 3: in the background. So it's the kind of landscape that
Speaker 3: maybe looks like if it had been the true colors,
Speaker 3: it would have been beautiful, but instead it looks just profoundly,
Speaker 3: deeply unhappy, And it kind of reminds me of some
Speaker 3: of the landscapes in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Speaker 3: in that way that, like some about the film style
Speaker 3: and the way the colors come through just makes the
Speaker 3: landscape very drab and unpleasant.
Speaker 1: But it's fitting, especially when we find out what this
Speaker 1: procession is about. It's about killing and tormenting people accused
Speaker 1: of sorcery and witchcraft.
Speaker 3: Right, We're here for the execution of a warlock and
Speaker 3: a witch and there's some there's some narration. You get
Speaker 3: a voice over. I think that's saying like I don't
Speaker 3: remember the exact words, but it's basically like France, you know,
Speaker 3: before indoor plumbing. Wow, do you you think war and
Speaker 3: disease are bad? How about satan?
Speaker 1: Yeah, superstition, ignorance, violence, They prepare you for all of
Speaker 1: it here.
Speaker 3: And the inquisitors' troops here look to me like two
Speaker 3: faces henchmen and batman forever. They've got these goofy red
Speaker 3: sock masks over their heads. That that was really kind
Speaker 3: of nice. And this is also where we get It's
Speaker 3: so the you know, the warlock in the Witch are
Speaker 3: taken to the place of execution. I don't know why
Speaker 3: it needed to be in the middle of this vest
Speaker 3: field with the mountains and the stream, but yeah, that's
Speaker 3: where they take them. And then there's some kind of
Speaker 3: you know, church official or something who reads out the
Speaker 3: charges to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think Maurice's ancestor is one of these
Speaker 1: people as well, so he technically has a double role. Also,
Speaker 1: one of these peoples is Alaric's brother, who's kind of
Speaker 1: like this one eyed Paul Nashi character with like a
Speaker 1: smug grin on his face and a scar. That is
Speaker 1: Alaric's brother Armand who is It's implied that he kind
Speaker 1: of helped do his brother in here.
Speaker 3: So yeah, but they're both played by Nashi, so it's
Speaker 3: Nashy punishing Nashi.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they read out a full list of charges,
Speaker 1: which in addition to you are vampires, and like athropes,
Speaker 1: you have drunk human blood of both the living and
Speaker 1: the dead. You have eaten flesh. You have celebrated the
Speaker 1: Black Mass with bloody sacrifices of the newborn and of
Speaker 1: your girls who have adored Satan and of followers of
Speaker 1: his Sabbath.
Speaker 3: Yes, verbatim, I believe.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they put the sorcerers to death. Warlock gets his
Speaker 3: head chopped off, and they like, I don't know how
Speaker 3: they kill the witch. They like hang her upside down
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they she screams. It seems like they're commencing
Speaker 1: to flogger and then cut. Yeah, she's presumed dead.
Speaker 3: Now here's the thing we discover later. I don't know why.
Speaker 3: This is when we find their bodies later in the movie.
Speaker 3: So this is going to be hundreds of years later.
Speaker 3: Obviously they want to be resurrected from the dead. But
Speaker 3: Paul Nashy's body, he's like an incorruptible saint, Like his
Speaker 3: body is all there. It still looks like, you know,
Speaker 3: totally fresh, and his head looks totally fresh. Meanwhile, Helga
Speaker 3: Lina's body is a skeleton with a wig on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, different, different, supernatural. Well, I guess here's the thing.
Speaker 1: He is the warlock. He is the one whose body
Speaker 1: is flowing with unnatural energy. She is his great love,
Speaker 1: and therefore she benefits from this sorcery. But she and
Speaker 1: she herself is a different type of entity. And later
Speaker 1: on in the film we had spelled out directly that
Speaker 1: they're slightly different rules for killing one versus the other
Speaker 1: by the way that opening execution is carried out via
Speaker 1: a decree from Carcassone, which was a French fortified city,
Speaker 1: and of course is also the name of a great
Speaker 1: German tile based board game which absolutely does not have
Speaker 1: a warlock execution expansion, but I think clearly needs one.
Speaker 3: Oh I never played it. What's a German style? Is
Speaker 3: that like Settlers of Catan kind of stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this one is one. It's a very calm
Speaker 1: and very relaxing board game. It's all about building walled
Speaker 1: cities and connecting them with roads with tiles, so it
Speaker 1: kind of you build it as you go and then
Speaker 1: at the end you score everything. And yeah, it's very cool.
Speaker 3: Okay, cut to the present day, and then Robin, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna need some help here. Who are the people our
Speaker 3: main characters. We have the Paul Nashy guy, and we
Speaker 3: have Maurice the painter, and then we have two women
Speaker 3: and then some other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was the I had to go back and
Speaker 1: put all this together again. But okay, we have we
Speaker 1: have al Rex descendant and well technically Armand's descendant, but
Speaker 1: also I guess Alyrex descendant. This is modern day contemporary
Speaker 1: Paul Nashi Hugo and his gal is Sylvia.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Then we have Hugo's painter friend Maurice, who is also
Speaker 1: he's a descendant of one of the witch hunters or
Speaker 1: executors here, and his gal is Paula.
Speaker 3: Okay, is so is are Sylvia and Hugo the ones
Speaker 3: where Sylvia is like, why don't we get married? And
Speaker 3: Hugo's like, because I'm Paul Nashi.
Speaker 1: Basically yeah, and I don't really remember what Maurice and
Speaker 1: Paula's whole vibe is other than they love each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so basically they're all like, like, hey, we should
Speaker 1: I forget exactly how they reach this point, maybe this
Speaker 1: little research is going on, but they're like, we should
Speaker 1: go out to the country to Hugo's chalais out there
Speaker 1: and we should have we should get this, we should
Speaker 1: hire somebody to do a seance so we can get
Speaker 1: in touch with his head, which, by the way, Maurice
Speaker 1: keeps seeing in his dreams and in his visions as
Speaker 1: he's drawn to paint grotesque scenes of decapitation.
Speaker 3: Well, now, wait, I thought they did the seance before
Speaker 3: they went to the chalet. Don't they do while they're
Speaker 3: still hanging out they're still in the city.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. Okay, so they do the Yes,
Speaker 1: they do the seance first, and that's the inspiration to
Speaker 1: then go out into the country and try to find
Speaker 1: the body and the head of Alric, which are which
Speaker 1: are deposited in different places.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I think Maurice is like, I'm seeing this
Speaker 3: head in my dreams and I'm painting it and I'm
Speaker 3: not very smart, and Hugh gooes like, I don't believe
Speaker 3: in heads. And then they're like, well, let's have a
Speaker 3: say and that'll tell us what to do. And then
Speaker 3: the medium at the seance is like, there's a severed
Speaker 3: head that you must dig up, and it's up at
Speaker 3: your up in the village, at your chalet.
Speaker 1: And thatsters head is in the crypt of the monastery
Speaker 1: and yeah, our our city humans here are here, like, well,
Speaker 1: we got to get these two back together again. Let's
Speaker 1: get this head in this body back together. And so
Speaker 1: they set.
Speaker 3: Out only good can come from it. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 3: they argue about this is one of the scenes where
Speaker 3: Hugo is skeptical because they're like, you must believe what
Speaker 3: Madame Irena said, because you know, it's a spirit was
Speaker 3: obviously choking her from beyond the grave. And Hugo's like, oh,
Speaker 3: it must have been. She must have put on makeup
Speaker 3: to show those bruises. But then why are they trying
Speaker 3: to resurrect a spirit that was choking somebody? That seems like,
Speaker 3: I don't know that. That's red flag number one that like,
Speaker 3: you should not resurrect this spirit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. But what do they do? They
Speaker 1: jump in the are that they head out into the countryside,
Speaker 1: and and here we kind of get into the We
Speaker 1: initially get into sort of the Texas chainsaw mask your
Speaker 1: territory of the city folks have come out into the
Speaker 1: country and now they're encountering country folk who are suspicious
Speaker 1: and dangerous.
Speaker 3: Well, and yeah, and it was weirdly more, Uh, I
Speaker 3: don't know, there's politics within this village or something. So
Speaker 3: like they get attacked on the road by bandits, and
Speaker 3: then some other guys show up too, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: these are the bandits, and they catch the bandits and
Speaker 3: just like Vigilanti justice murder them. But then also, I
Speaker 3: think the vigilantes then are essentially bandits also, and they
Speaker 3: tried to extort money from from the heroes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and end up selling them a car because they think, yeah,
Speaker 1: when the bandits initially attacked, they end up wrecking the
Speaker 1: car and they're like, well, we'll sell you won for
Speaker 1: three thousand. And of course the lead bandit is watching
Speaker 1: as Hugo busts out this big roll of money, and
Speaker 1: you know, he's eyeball and it like, ooh, I'm definitely
Speaker 1: gonna rob these people later. Yeah, and that is indeed
Speaker 1: what they are plotting to do later. We'll come back.
Speaker 3: So here I got I got really confused about how
Speaker 3: this was happening. But do if I'm going to do
Speaker 3: like Hugo and the rest of them hire the villagers
Speaker 3: to just dig up all around this ancient church and
Speaker 3: find they're looking for a box that has a warlockhead
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I think the villagers are kind of
Speaker 1: interested in it because there's also talk of there being
Speaker 1: some sort of a treasure, so they're like, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: help you dig this up. He will even go to
Speaker 1: that place where they say a demon stalks at night.
Speaker 1: So they're this weird mix of very superstitious but also
Speaker 1: you know, up for whatever. One of the villagers here
Speaker 1: that we meet is this this this Alan character. Uh
Speaker 1: and this is the he has twos. He has two daughters,
Speaker 1: one is Chantal and the other is Elvira.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, yeah, I didn't know where some of
Speaker 3: these characters came from. But so some of the villagers
Speaker 3: they find a box they like, dig it up, and
Speaker 3: they again correct me if I'm wrong. I think they
Speaker 3: think it's treasure. So they get real excited and they
Speaker 3: open it up, like they blow torch the lock and
Speaker 3: crack it open. But when they crack it open, it's
Speaker 3: not treasure. It is a warlockhead. And then the warlockhead
Speaker 3: hypnotizes them and turns them into like murderers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Alrich's head hypnotizes them and particularly hypnotizes Alan
Speaker 1: here the father of Elvira, and has him go around
Speaker 1: with this huge scary scythe there this wonderful crooked cutting
Speaker 1: implement that again I think is quite scary and has
Speaker 1: him going around butchering people with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for a while here there just seems to
Speaker 3: be kind of like random roaming sickle guys and they
Speaker 3: are there. Some people are just getting killed and other
Speaker 3: people are getting hypnotized to go work for the warlock head.
Speaker 3: The head right, because it's not a full yet. It's
Speaker 3: in fact, the most hilarious detail is that they there's
Speaker 3: like a scene where they literally go down into the
Speaker 3: crypt and they start taking orders from the warlock head.
Speaker 3: He's like he can't move his head. So it's really funny,
Speaker 3: like how far his eyes move back and forth when
Speaker 3: he's looking at the different people, Like what's this?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: You know you must do this.
Speaker 1: Very you know, templar esque in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: the charges that were leveled against the Templars about the
Speaker 1: worship of decapitated heads. And it reminds me a little
Speaker 1: bit of the treatment of this idea in C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis's that hideous strength as well. Hmm. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: the head needs the body, it needs people to help
Speaker 1: with the body, and some blood needs to be spilled
Speaker 1: on along the way, and so we do get a
Speaker 1: series of sickle murders, including Alan killing his own daughter
Speaker 1: Chantelle here in a already terrifying scene. This is a
Speaker 1: scene I had to watch a couple of times because
Speaker 1: I thought it ended up being you know, blocked in,
Speaker 1: you know, in a way that and shot in a
Speaker 1: way that that I found rather effective. There's there's a
Speaker 1: certain art to having your your brutal you know, Jallo
Speaker 1: style murders in a film, and they don't always work.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they come off very fake, or they come off
Speaker 1: more about showing the blood than sort of you know,
Speaker 1: teasing the idea of the violence. So this is not
Speaker 1: one of those scenes where we see a lot of
Speaker 1: like parting of flesh and see heart getting ripped out
Speaker 1: and so forth. But there's just like this sudden attack
Speaker 1: and then the sickle comes out and there's a sound effect.
Speaker 1: I thought it worked really well.
Speaker 3: Oh but there is the latter in this movie. There's
Speaker 3: plenty of that where but there's one where Helga Lene
Speaker 3: literally just like reaches into a guy's chest cavity with
Speaker 3: her fingers and prize his chest apart to get that heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the chest cat. This is one of those films
Speaker 1: where human flesh is just like to the undead and
Speaker 1: they can just rip right in there and pull out
Speaker 1: any organ they want.
Speaker 3: This is another sequence though, where I was like, when
Speaker 3: people were getting sickled, I did not know who was who,
Speaker 3: and I was confused when somebody like it seems like
Speaker 3: somebody turns up dead and then the next scene somebody goes, well,
Speaker 3: she's sleeping now, and I was like, well, wasn't she dead?
Speaker 3: Then I think maybe they're talking about another character who
Speaker 3: was present, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those films too, where on
Speaker 1: one hand the script was allegedly written in like two days,
Speaker 1: But on the other hand too, it's like we're dealing
Speaker 1: with the Grindhouse era dubbing, where it wasn't really about
Speaker 1: necessarily making sure that all the intricacies of the original
Speaker 1: dialogue are maintained, it's about getting that product out right.
Speaker 3: So at some point after this, there is a scene
Speaker 3: where both Sylvia and Maurice get hypnotized to go work
Speaker 3: for the Warlock. Right, So, like Maurice goes out walking
Speaker 3: and then he gets hypnotized by hypnotized Sylvia and they
Speaker 3: they all end up going down into the crypt, and
Speaker 3: that's where the warlock head starts talking to them. This
Speaker 3: was another laugh out loud scene for me again, anytime
Speaker 3: the head is talking without the body, I found it
Speaker 3: very funny. And he gives a full bond villain monologue,
Speaker 3: but as a severed head sitting in a box talking
Speaker 3: and I had to transcribe this, I thought it was great.
Speaker 3: So it is like you, Maurice, he says, the last name.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what it is. You know, you, Maurice,
Speaker 3: With the blood of my enemies running through your veins,
Speaker 3: you will serve and help me accomplish my vengeance. Today
Speaker 3: the faithful Companion Mobile de la Cree will return, and
Speaker 3: in the space of seven moons, and when the heavens
Speaker 3: are propitious, our power will be at its maximum strength,
Speaker 3: so that we can exterminate all those who executed us,
Speaker 3: and our unbounded hatred will make all mankind tremble, and
Speaker 3: thereby we will thus be avenged. Right, it sounds like
Speaker 3: a plan, and thereby we will thus be avenged. I
Speaker 3: think this warlock in his day job may have been
Speaker 3: a lawyer. It's very contracty kind of language.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, back, I mean, I think that's that's fair.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, like what was a warlock but
Speaker 1: a lawyer who dealt mainly with one client, that being
Speaker 1: the the lord of the pit himself, Lord Satan.
Speaker 3: But also in the scene this is I think the
Speaker 3: resurrection scene where the warlock and Mobile are sort of
Speaker 3: brought back, so like they put the Warlock's head back
Speaker 3: on his body and somehow they turn Mobile from a
Speaker 3: skeleton with a wig on into hellgalln A, oh.
Speaker 1: God it this is scene is great. Yes, So the
Speaker 1: resurrected Alrich here, but he's one piece again. He places
Speaker 1: the unconscious Sylvia upon the skeletal remains in the casket,
Speaker 1: slices open her chest and any kind of necro philatically
Speaker 1: resurrects Mabel. He like kind of like lays on top
Speaker 1: of these two bodies in the casket. And then the
Speaker 1: next shot is Mabel is rising up out of the
Speaker 1: casket like the bones of her old bones like spilling
Speaker 1: to the side and she's back baby. And then Alaric
Speaker 1: kills Alan and cuts out his heart. So just a
Speaker 1: great sequence of events here, I guess, like I say,
Speaker 1: they're a power couple. You can't help you feel their
Speaker 1: energy and get behind him here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're clearly happy to be reunited. They are ready
Speaker 3: to go do copious evil together. Yes, so I think
Speaker 3: there's like a scene where they're getting it was not clear,
Speaker 3: but they're like getting revenge on the descendants of the
Speaker 3: people who executed them. I think they're just going and
Speaker 3: like attacking random villagers.
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess this was part of the vengeance,
Speaker 1: or it might have just been a situation with like
Speaker 1: we got to power up and eat more hearts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there are these wonderful scenes where Alaric and Mabel
Speaker 1: go off to love up and kill other characters. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure these are necessarily characters that we had met before.
Speaker 1: Mabel finds a young villager dude, she strips nude and
Speaker 1: he gets nude, and then she backscratches him to death.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And then Alaric's occult charisma causes a villager woman to
Speaker 1: strip nude, so he strips nude and this is when
Speaker 1: we get to see physique by Nashi here, and then
Speaker 1: they climb into bed together. Cut to villager dude with
Speaker 1: his backslashed, cut to a nude woman dead with her
Speaker 1: heart cut out.
Speaker 3: I think this is a John Saxon situation though, where
Speaker 3: like Nashi, clearly he's like, I got to show my
Speaker 3: chest in this movie. People need to see these muscles. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so he found ways to work it in.
Speaker 1: I had. It also made me look up, as with
Speaker 1: John Saxon, I had to look up old bodybuilding photographs
Speaker 1: and yeah, you see, I found some old Paul Nashi
Speaker 1: shots of him in like full bodybuilder mode and yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now there's some like, eh Magic Dynamics where there's
Speaker 3: like a magical amulet that pops up sometime around here
Speaker 3: in the movie, and I was trying my hardest to
Speaker 3: figure out did we already know something about this or
Speaker 3: is this just out of nowhere? Like, oh, yeah, there
Speaker 3: is an amulet that will defeat the warlock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this kind of comes out of nowhere. As I
Speaker 1: recall Elvira, the local girl and ultimately she's gonna be
Speaker 1: our final girl here, she's like, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: I just remembered something. There's this Thor's Hammer amulet and
Speaker 1: it can destroy powerful undead creatures. Oh, so useful information
Speaker 1: to suddenly have. And also we later learn and I
Speaker 1: don't remember how we learn this, but we learned that
Speaker 1: Thor's hammer will not outright destroy a female undead a
Speaker 1: female resurrected being. No, for that, you need a long
Speaker 1: silver needle.
Speaker 3: Right, So, yeah, the hammer only works on Paul Nashi,
Speaker 3: the warlock Paul Nashi. I remember how they find this out.
Speaker 3: They open up a book and they're reading the book
Speaker 3: and I'm like, what is this book. I don't know
Speaker 3: if they ever explain what the book is. They just
Speaker 3: have a book that tells you how to kill the warlock.
Speaker 1: This was the research portion of the movie. I forgot
Speaker 1: about this, But.
Speaker 3: So there is a scene where after this, like, the
Speaker 3: remaining humans include Hugo, who is unhypnotized at this point
Speaker 3: that's normal, that's regular, Paul Nashy, and Elvira, and I
Speaker 3: think maybe somebody else I don't know. So zombies attack
Speaker 3: the house and it's really This was also very funny
Speaker 3: because I think we get Alan or Elaine, the guy
Speaker 3: from the village, talking to Elvira and he's like, Elvira,
Speaker 3: my daughter opened the door and he sounds like Dracula,
Speaker 3: but she's like, oh dad. But when the zombies get
Speaker 3: into the house, they are vocal fry zombies. They are
Speaker 3: just wandering the halls going non stop and till there's
Speaker 3: a torch stand off. Paul Nashy lights up a torch
Speaker 3: and waves it at them. He does an awful lot
Speaker 3: of waving that torch. That goes on for a while,
Speaker 3: and eventually he gets him out of the house. He's
Speaker 3: like shoo, shoo, and you know, they get out of
Speaker 3: the door, and then he I think tries to burn them,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if it exactly works, because later
Speaker 3: he's like looking for their bodies in the lake or
Speaker 3: something he kept.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a brief burning man stunt here where
Speaker 1: he catches one of the one of the zombies on fire,
Speaker 1: or at least catches the pants in the back on fire.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: So yeah, basically Night of a Living Dead scenario here
Speaker 1: with dead villagers. They're able to successfully successfully fight them
Speaker 1: off until dawn.
Speaker 3: After this, Maurice comes back the Painter guy and he's like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not hypnotized by the Warlock anymore. And Hugh goes like,
Speaker 3: oh great, well then I need you to go help
Speaker 3: me do something. We're gonna need an axe and some
Speaker 3: wood and then he says to Elvira, so they're leaving
Speaker 3: the house that he's like, you stay here. It's going
Speaker 3: this is a direct quote. It's going to be disagreeable.
Speaker 3: You'll be in no danger even if you're alone. What's
Speaker 3: the basis for that?
Speaker 1: I guess it's because it's daytime. The sun is Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that could be it, and she shouldn't see what they're
Speaker 1: going to do. What they are going to do. This
Speaker 1: is the same the following sequence. I think I watched
Speaker 1: three different times and finally consulted a summary to really
Speaker 1: nail down what they were trying to do in this sequence.
Speaker 3: Well, what are they trying to do? So they go
Speaker 3: to the lake and the lake is making bubbling tarpit
Speaker 3: sounds and I don't know why, but.
Speaker 1: They have to live an axe and they have firewood,
Speaker 1: and they have like a big long pole with a
Speaker 1: hook on it, like they're going to drag the lake.
Speaker 1: Apparently they have come out here to find the bodies
Speaker 1: of the zombies from last night, any remaining bodies, and
Speaker 1: burn them.
Speaker 3: But they don't quite get to do that because Maurice
Speaker 3: was not so unpossessed after all. Looks like this was
Speaker 3: all a trap.
Speaker 1: That's right, a brutal betrayal in which Maurice possessed Maurice
Speaker 1: kills Hugo with a shotgun.
Speaker 3: So this is regular Paul Nashi is dead. Now only
Speaker 3: warlock Poul Nashi remains.
Speaker 1: Right, And again I was kind of surprised by this
Speaker 1: because I thought it was going to ultimately be Nashi
Speaker 1: versus Nashy, but instead no, only Aleric remains.
Speaker 3: But however, I think Maurice is genuinely awakened from his
Speaker 3: hypnotized state by the Thor's hammer amulet, like I think,
Speaker 3: what's her name? Alvira presses that against him and then
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, I'm good now. And then that's when
Speaker 3: they read the book they find. They just start reading
Speaker 3: a book and it tells them how to kill warlocks
Speaker 3: and zombies and the silver Needle and all that. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: this is when we get the argument between the warlock
Speaker 3: and Hellgaalaine about when they should eat hearts. You know,
Speaker 3: I will eat hearts later, but I'm hungry now. And
Speaker 3: they settle this by going out to find the bandits
Speaker 3: or the vigilantes from earlier who were camped out with
Speaker 3: a fire by the riverbank, and they just say Hi,
Speaker 3: We're gonna eat your hearts now, and they do. This
Speaker 3: is where Mabile like rips the dude's chest open with
Speaker 3: her hands.
Speaker 1: Nice. So many chests get ripped open in this film,
Speaker 1: and this all leads up to our final showdown. So
Speaker 1: on one hand, we have Maurice and we have Alvira,
Speaker 1: and then we also have Alaric and Mabel and Elvira
Speaker 1: and Maurice. They have the weapons now, they feel like
Speaker 1: they know what they need to do. They have the amulet,
Speaker 1: they have the needle, and so the battle begins basically
Speaker 1: the way this is. I thought thought this was a
Speaker 1: nice final showdown, but ultimately Maurice and Alaric both throw
Speaker 1: items at each other at the same time. Maurice is
Speaker 1: throwing the thor amulet and Alaric is throwing an axe,
Speaker 1: so Maurice is killed by the axe. Meanwhile, the amulet
Speaker 1: hits Alaric and wounds him. Alvira is fighting Mabel and
Speaker 1: stabs her with a silver needle, which just destroys her.
Speaker 1: And then Elvira picks up the amulet and presses it
Speaker 1: to the wounded Alaric's head, and this resolves in a
Speaker 1: nice dramatic death sequence for Paul Nashy's Alaric.
Speaker 3: So Elvira survives the Warlock horror.
Speaker 1: That's right, Alaric. He falls to his knees, his head
Speaker 1: falls off his body, and his head tumbled down some
Speaker 1: stairs and then just burned to a crisp.
Speaker 3: They end up looking at they're kind of like a
Speaker 3: smoldering orange newspapers.
Speaker 1: It looks like yeah. And then and then Elvira, in
Speaker 1: kind of a daze, she wanders back down to the
Speaker 1: lake and she throws the thor Amulet into the water.
Speaker 1: And that's the end of the movie.
Speaker 3: Now that's the I was confused by that. Why did
Speaker 3: she throw the amulet in the water. The amulet wasn't bad,
Speaker 3: The amulet protected them from evil. How does she know
Speaker 3: that there isn't that she's not gonna need that again?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, she seemed to think it
Speaker 1: belonged there. I don't know. If she was like, I've
Speaker 1: had enough of this, I'm throwing this into the water.
Speaker 1: If this is like throwing Goose's dog tags into the
Speaker 1: ocean and top Gun, I don't know, if this is
Speaker 1: like ex Caliber needs to be returned to the lake
Speaker 1: and so she's throwing those thrown into the lake. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exactly what the rationale was here, other than
Speaker 1: to have a kind of haunting, ambiguous ending to the
Speaker 1: whole affair. Yeah, which is sort of what we had
Speaker 1: in the lorel Grasp. We had a haunting, ambiguous ending
Speaker 1: by the lake shore.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, except this movie, unlike Lorealized Grasp, does
Speaker 3: not have a doomed monster romance component. It does not
Speaker 3: have like the human falls in love with a monster.
Speaker 3: If there is a love story, it's the love story
Speaker 3: between two evil monsters, and unfortunately they are both they
Speaker 3: are both thwarted by bumbling humans.
Speaker 1: In the end, well, Alrich is clearly upset when his
Speaker 1: loved one dies again, Like we do get a moment
Speaker 1: of him reacting to that, and I felt bad for
Speaker 1: him because again I was behind this power couple. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what their their their modern power couple name
Speaker 1: would be combining Alaric and Mabel.
Speaker 3: I'll leave Medford Maloric.
Speaker 1: Malaric, Team Malarek. Yeah, I was one on Team Malrek.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was a little a little sad when
Speaker 1: when when when things went down the way they did.
Speaker 3: I think Nashi's look as the warlock is far superior
Speaker 3: to his look as a modern day man, So yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 3: On one day, he's wearing this gross, pale makeup and
Speaker 3: he always looks sweaty, and he's got this fake beard
Speaker 3: and he's got the cool cape and everything, and that
Speaker 3: all just gels. That works. And the other one.
Speaker 1: There's an actual gel too, there's that red gel or
Speaker 1: purple gel. So he has this demonic light to him,
Speaker 1: and yeah, he's just got this sardonic look on his face.
Speaker 1: Absolutely love this look.
Speaker 3: That look. That look works, and when you compare that
Speaker 3: to his look as the modern man who tucks his
Speaker 3: turtleneck in, it's just it's not the same. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh, before we close out, one more Maurice moment that
Speaker 1: I love. There's a part earlier in the film where
Speaker 1: they've gone out into the country and he comes back
Speaker 1: from town. I'm not sure what he was doing in town,
Speaker 1: but he's talking to Hugo and he's like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: place sucks. Like I went into town and the kids
Speaker 1: were throwing rocks at me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I loved it. I did not know what that meant,
Speaker 3: but it was funny, all right.
Speaker 1: The movie is horror Rises from the Tomb. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. At some point in the future,
Speaker 1: I may have to come back and look around at
Speaker 1: some of these Paul nashi werewolf films and figure out
Speaker 1: what might be the Paul Nashy werewolf film to watch.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but if anyone out there has any ideas,
Speaker 1: feel free to write in and let us know. All right.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to listen to other
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema episodes, you'll find them in the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed every Friday. We're mainly
Speaker 1: a science podcast, but once a week we like to
Speaker 1: set aside everything that's serious and just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film. So yeah, I get that. Wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. If you want a full list of the
Speaker 1: movies we've covered, there are two places you can go
Speaker 1: for that, aside from the episode feed. You can go
Speaker 1: to letterbox that's L E T T E R bo
Speaker 1: x D, and if you look up the account Weird House,
Speaker 1: you'll find a list there with all the movies in there.
Speaker 1: So you can get this nice visual of everything that
Speaker 1: we've covered and sometimes a glimpse at what we're going
Speaker 1: to cover. I also blog about these at a personal
Speaker 1: blog titled Summuta Music, so you can go there as well.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
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